Make rsync case insensitive

Question

I'm rsync'ing a bunch of files between a Windows and a Linux system. Since not all Windows care about case, some of the files on the Windows system no longer have the same casing as they had on the Linux system. But rsync now treats these files as different and uploads a new copy.

Is it possible to have rsync ignore the case?

Answer 1

You could try using rsync's fuzzy matching system:

-y, --fuzzy

This option tells rsync that it should look for a basis file for any destination file that is missing. The current algorithm looks in the same directory as the destination file for either a file that has an identical size and modified-time, or a similarly-named file. If found, rsync uses the fuzzy basis file to try to speed up the transfer.

Note that the use of the --delete option might get rid of any potential fuzzy-match files, so either use --delete-after or specify some filename exclusions if you need to prevent this.

Answer 2

There is no specific option to make rsync case-insensitive. Although, NTFS preserves case so you shouldn't have much problem with it. On the other hand, FAT filesystems have more issues with rsync and such a combination should be avoided.

Answer 3

Rsync has what they call a "maintained patch" that adds an --ignore-case switch. You need to compile rsync from source for this, and apply ignore-case.patch. You need the patched rsync version on both the local as the remote side.